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Los Angeles (CNN) — A California judge ruled as unconstitutional Tuesday the state’s teacher tenure, dismissal and layoff laws, saying they keep bad teachers in the classroom and force out the good ones, the plaintiffs said.

The ruling was hailed by the nation’s top education chief as bringing to California — and possibly the nation — an opportunity to build “a new framework for the teaching profession.” The decision represented “a mandate” to fix a broken teaching system, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

The Los Angeles County court ordered a stay on the decision, pending an appeal by the state and the teachers union, the plaintiffs said.

Reforming teacher tenure and firing laws is a hotly debated issue in American education, and the California case is being watched nationally — evidenced by a statement by Duncan immediately after the court ruling.

Reformers say firing a bad teacher is almost impossible because of tenure laws and union protections, but teachers and their unions argue school boards and their firing criteria have unfair, overtly political standards.

The teachers union is, of course, vowing an appeal. But if this is upheld at higher levels, it’ll be fascinating to see what repercussions it will have on other states where Republicans are battling Democrats in an effort to reform broken education systems – as is the case here in NC. More school children might, I dunno, start learning more instead of just being a warm body occupying a desk just barely making it by from grade to grade. Wouldn’t that be great?

In an editorial published at Bloomberg View– which was adapted off of a commencement speech he gave yesterday at Harvard, Michael Bloomberg makes some surprisingly good points about the intolerance of liberals at colleges across America towards conservative thought (via):

There is an idea floating around college campuses — including here at Harvard — that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism.

In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left-wing ideas. Today, on many campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species.

Perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League. In the 2012 presidential race, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama. That statistic, drawn from Federal Election Commission data, should give us pause — and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama. When 96 percent of faculty donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a university should offer. Diversity of gender, ethnicity and orientation is important. But a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous.

In fact, the whole purpose of granting tenure to professors is to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on ideas that run afoul of university politics and societal norms. When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservative norms.

Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideas run up against liberal norms. Otherwise, university research will lose credibility. A liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism.

This spring, it has been disturbing to see a number of college commencement speakers withdraw, or have their invitations rescinded, after protests from students and — to me, shockingly — from senior faculty and administrators who should know better.

It happened at Brandeis, Haverford, Rutgers and Smith. Last year, it happened at Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins. In each case, liberals silenced a voice and denied an honorary degree to individuals they deemed politically objectionable.

As a former chairman of Johns Hopkins, I believe that a university’s obligation is not to teach students what to think, but to teach students how to think. And that requires listening to the other side, weighing arguments without prejudging them, and determining whether the other side might actually make some fair points.

If the faculty fails to do this, then it is the responsibility of the administration and governing body to step in and make it a priority. If they do not, if students graduate with ears and minds closed, the university has failed both the student and society. If you want to know where that leads, look no further than Washington.

I am aware that Bloomberg remains a hypocrite on guns who believes that his use of wealth to push his policy preferences whether people want them or not will buy his way into heaven, even though he doesn’t really believe in God. He’s a small man with a gargantuan ego. But when he’s right, he’s right, and in this speech, he’s right. His commencement address is an important one.

Yes. As the old saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day. While Bloomberg is frequently wrong – more wrong than right, in fact, at least in this instance he hit it on the mark. Well done. For a change.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided against delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University following protests by some faculty and students over her role in the Iraq War.

Rice said in a statement Saturday that she informed Rutgers President Robert Barchi that she was declining the invitation.

“Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families,” Rice said. “Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

[…]

But some students and faculty had protested, staging sit-ins and saying Rice bore some responsibility for the Iraq War as a member of the Bush administration. Barchi and other school leaders had resisted the calls to disinvite Rice, saying the university welcomes open discourse on controversial topics.

In her statement, Rice defended her record, saying that she was honored to serve her country and that she had “defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas.” But she said she didn’t want to detract from the spirit of the commencement ceremony.

In a statement when the controversy first erupted, Rutgers President Robert Barchi said, “We cannot protect free speech or academic freedom by denying others the right to an opposing view, or by excluding those with whom we may disagree. Free speech and academic freedom cannot be determined by any group. They cannot insist on consensus or popularity.”

Barchi had adopted a different tone this week: “I frankly wish from my point of view that this whole affair was not here right now because it’s distracting from what great things we’re doing as a university. … It does have us, for better or worse, right in the crosshairs right now.”

No longer.

As always, Ms. Rice was a complete class act in her statement – while the self-important nitwits at the university who militantly protested her over simple political disagreement put the “a**” in classy. Chalk up Rutgers as being one more in a long list of “institutions of higher learning” where liberal talk of respecting and welcoming a “diversity of viewpoints” is little more than a meaningless, empty slogan. Wusses.

Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Adviser for President George W Bush.

I wrote about this in early March, and the Rutgers liberal faithful are still at it over a month later – presumably because they have nothing better to do. Via Fox News:

Roughly 50 Rutgers University students staged a sit-in at a school administration building in New Brunswick on Monday to protest the school’s decision to invite Condoleezza Rice to speak at the university’s commencement next month.

The school’s Board of Governors voted to pay the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser $35,000 for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony, where she will be awarded an honorary degree.

But several faculty members and students want the invitation rescinded because of Rice’s role in the Iraq War. Rutgers’ New Brunswick Faculty Council passed a resolution in March calling on the university’s board of governors to rescind its invitation.

Photos and videos of Monday’s protest posted to Twitter showed students lining a staircase leading to University President Robert Barchi’s office, The Star-Ledger reported.

Some students held up signs reading, “No honors for war criminals,” “War criminals out” and “RU 4 Humanity?” the report said.

Fortunately, Barchi is standing strong in the face of the attempts by these “tolerant” students to engage in the hypocritical selective “diversity” so often displayed by the activist left:

Barchi and the university’s board of governors have resisted calls to “disinvite” Rice. In a letter to the campus last month, Barchi said the university welcomes open discourse on controversial topics.

“Like our fellow citizens, you and I — our colleagues — have deep and sincerely held beliefs and convictions that often stand in stark contrast to others around us,” Barchi wrote. “Yet, we cannot protect free speech or academic freedom by denying others the right to an opposing view, or by excluding those with whom we may disagree. Free speech and academic freedom cannot be determined by any group. They cannot insist on consensus or popularity.”

You can view photos and tweets of the “#NoRice” protest here, if for nothing else than for your own amusement. This one was one of my favorites:

In late February, the City University of New York announced that it had tapped Princeton economist and New York Times blogger Paul Krugman for a distinguished professorship at CUNY’s Graduate Center and its Luxembourg Income Study Center, a research arm devoted to studying income patterns and their effect on inequality.

About that. According to a formal offer letter obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, CUNY intends to pay Krugman $225,000, or $25,000 per month (over two semesters), to “play a modest role in our public events” and “contribute to the build-up” of a new “inequality initiative.” It is not clear, and neither CUNY nor Krugman was able to explain, what “contribute to the build-up” entails.

It’s certainly not teaching. “You will not be expected to teach or supervise students,” the letter informs Professor Krugman, who replies: “I admit that I had to read it several times to be clear … it’s remarkably generous.” (After his first year, Krugman will be required to host a single seminar.)

Sooo, basically the esteemed Krugman will get paid $225,000 a year to do … nothing. In fact, it sounds like this “position” will benefit Paul Krugman a hell of a lot more than those whose incomes he supposedly wants to make “more equal.” Sound familiar?

Here’s a thought experiment for you: Imagine a university that, through sheer chance, wound up with a mostly Black or Asian student body. Concerned faculty meet, their brows furrowed gravely. What can be done to fix this problem?

And then, a solution! Solicit advice from students and alumni on how the university can make itself “more White.”

And now imagine the national furor that would erupt.

That’s what should happen to Western Washington University in Bellingham, which is worried that it is too White:

Western Washington University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.”

The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth.

The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform.

“I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, that we as a faculty and staff and student body, as an administration, if we 10 years from now are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university,” said Bruce Shepard, president of WWU, in a 2012 address.

Maybe I’m just a parochial, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, supremacist White guy from a middle-class, suburban background, and so I’m too reactionary and by definition racist to comprehend the enlightened attitudes of our academic betters. Evidently I’m too stupid to see that nothing is more important than skin color. And I’m just crazy enough to still take seriously something once said by another noted reactionary:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

WWU President Bruce Shepard probably would like to tell Dr. King he had it backwards: he should have wanted his children judged not for the content of their character, for then they could have earned admittance to Western Washington University based solely on the color of their skin.

This is progressive racialist nonsense laid bare. Instead of looking for real diversity, such as an intellectual diversity ranging from Right to Left and a cultural diversity not inextricably tied to skin tone, the academic Left divides society into group identities, to which everyone is assigned regardless of individual belief (1). You can bet WWU’s struggle to be less White is informed by Critical Race Theory and is meant to battle the Leftist scapegoats, structural racism and White privilege.

The only factors that should ever be considered in admissions decisions are academic performance and, if you want to give aid, economic need. One of the few things California has done right in recent years is to ban “affirmative action” in college admissions, though that battle is never truly over.

If I were a student a WWU, I’d transfer. I wouldn’t want to be associated with such a race-obsessed institution. If I were a donor, I’d cancel my donation. And if I were a citizen of Washington, I’d demand to know why the state legislature is funding an institution that not only discriminates based on race, in contradiction to everything this nation is supposed to stand for, but asks for advice on how to do it better!

This is just bunk. (3)

Footnote:
(1) An example I came across years ago: a man of Black African ancestry, born in Francophone Africa but raised in France, identifies wholly with France — French culture, French history, the French language. His heart stirs when he sings La Marsellaise (2) or sees La Tricolore. Now, is he “French,” or (in American racial-cultural terms) “Black?” The gentleman himself would tell you he is French, and proudly so. The racialist, on the other hand, sees only the melanin in his skin. The rest just makes him a self-hating victim of “cultural imperialism.”
(2) Whatever else I might say about France, they do have the best national anthem on the planet.
(3) I’m sure you know what word I really meant. But, this is a family show.

New Brunswick Today reported this week that controversy has erupted on the Rutgers University campus over the decision by the university’s board of governors to invite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak at this year’s commencement ceremony (via Fox News):

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Rutgers University’s New Brunswick Faculty Council passed a resolution on Friday condemning the selection of Condoleezza Rice as the 2014 commencement speaker.

Rice, who is considered by many to be a controversial official in the administration of President George W. Bush, has not been well-received by the university community since she was announced as the graduation speaker last month.

“Condoleezza Rice…played a prominent role in the administration’s efforts to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction,” reads the resolution adopted Friday.

“[She] at the very least condoned the administration’s policy of [torture] such as water boarding.”

The council had been working for several weeks to see this resolution through. It was introducted by chemistry professor Robert Boikess.

According to Boikess, ““Commencement should be about celebrating. It shouldn’t be about politics and polarizing student and faculty by bringing such a controversial speaker.”

Several other faculty voiced their support for the resolution.

French professor François Cornilliat criticized Rice’s selection as “heavily political”, asserting that “our students are being manipulated to deliver a political point.”

History professor Rudolph Bell was somewhat ambivalent, saying that Rice should not speak at graduation, but should be welcome to speak at some other event. Bell suggested that Rice was not the right person to “inspire graduating seniors.”

The Faculty Council resolution called Rice’s selection “misguided,” and called for the Board of Governors to reconsider its decision.

The Rutgers Board of Governors unanimously approved Rice as the commencement speaker in February, and approved a $35,000 honorarium for the former Secretary of State.

Rice will also receive an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree from the university.

The resolution said that such a degree “should not honor someone who participated in a political effort to circumnavigate the law”.

“A commencement speaker, who is entrusted with speaking to graduating students about the direction of their future lives, should embody moral authority and exemplary citizenship”, reads the resolution.

“[P]olitical effort to circumnavigate the law”? “[S]hould embody moral authority”? Guess this means in the future that President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, former IRS official Lois Lerner and other Obama administration officials should be left off the invite list as well.

Cancel the philosophy courses, people. Oh, and we’re going to be shuttering the political science, religion, and pre-law departments too. We’ll keep some of the English and history folks on for a while longer, but they should probably keep their résumés handy.

Because, you see, they are of no use anymore. We have the answers to the big questions, so why keep pretending there’s anything left to discuss?

At least that’s where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor, Robert George, to have a debate. The two men are friends, and by all accounts they had an utterly civil exchange of ideas. But that only made the whole thing even more outrageous.

“What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion,” Ching told the Daily Gazette, the school’s newspaper. “I don’t think we should be tolerating [George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”

Swarthmore must be so proud.

Over at Harvard, another young lady has similar views. Harvard Crimson editorial writer Sandra Y. L. Korn recently called for getting rid of academic freedom in favor of something called “academic justice.”

“If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?” Korn asks.

Goldberg goes on to add more examples of this fascistic train of thought, and finishes with this:

More pernicious, however, is that they believe the question of justice is a settled matter. We know what justice is, so why let serious people debate it anymore? The millennia-old dialogue between Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Rawls, Rorty, Hayek et al.? Shut it down, people. Or at least if the conversation heads in a direction where the Korns, Chings, and Streisands smell “oppression” — as defined solely by the Left — then it must not be “put up with.” Diversity demands that diversity of opinion not be tolerated anymore.

Indeed.

I’ve noted here and elsewhere numerous times (and have included examples) about how modern liberals are some of the most intolerant, closed-minded people you will ever come across – in spite of popular myth (as routinely and eagerly perpetuated by their allies in the mainstream press) to the contrary. And as Goldberg pointed out, some of the worst of it comes from our institutions of “higher learning” – you know, the places you’re supposed to go to learn how to think outside of the box? And once they graduate, they move on to bigger and better attempts at shutting down debate by declaring any attempts you make at preserving your right to speak out, think differently,observe your religious beliefs, and hold on to more of the money you earn as the equivalent to “racism, homophobia, sexism”, etc – as we’re seeing play out in states like Kansas and right here in NC.

In a nutshell: “diversity” to the left is not diversity at all. Was having a bit of a discussion with a friend here in NC about this, and her comment to me was that unfortunately this type of thing will never change – and in fact appears to be getting worse, but as I told her, that doesn’t mean we should ever stop raising hell about it. You know what they say about sunlight …

A realistic-looking statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear near the center of Wellesley College has created a stir among the women on campus, especially as more than 100 students at the all-women’s college signed a petition asking administrators to remove it.

The statue, called Sleepwalker, is part of an art exhibit featuring sculptor Tony Matelli at the college’s Davis Museum. The exhibit, New Gravity, features sculptures that are often reversed, upended or atomized.

However, the statue of the sleepwalker — which is hard to miss in a high-traffic area by both pedestrians and drivers near the campus center — has caused outrage among some students in just one day after its Feb. 3 installation. Zoe Magid, a Wellesley College junior majoring in political science, started a petition on Change.org with other students asking college president H. Kim Bottomly to have the statue removed.

“[T]his highly lifelike sculpture has, within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community,” says the petition. “While it may appear humorous, or thought-provoking to some, it has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work in this space.”

However, Magid said over the phone Tuesday that Fischman’s response failed to address students’ concerns.

“We were really disappointed that she seemed to articulate that she was glad it was starting discussion, but didn’t respond to the fact that it’s making students on campus feel unsafe, which is not appropriate,” Magid said. “We really feel that if a piece of art makes students feel unsafe, that steps over a line.“

Really. The pearl-clutching over this at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s all-girls alma mater is hysterical. I thought feminists were supposed to have thicker skin than this? It’s a statue. A tacky one, but a “piece of art” all the same. What is it that makes them feel “unsafe”? The fact that the statue is nearly naked or … gasp … that it’s a reminder of the dreaded “patriarchy”? Either way, grow a pair, ladies. There are actually much more important, pressing things going on in the world that you might wanna tackle before waxing indignant over a harmless male sculpture.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – School officials at the University of Minnesota are working with black student and facility organizations after they wrote a letter to the school’s president about the racial descriptions given in crime alerts.

The letter, sent on Dec. 6, 2013, was issued by members of the African American and African Studies, Black Faculty and Staff Association, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association, Black Men’s Forum, Black Student Union and Huntley House for African American Males.

It was directed to University President Eric Kaler and Pamela Wheelock, the vice president of University Services.

Students and staff mailed the letter more than a month after the campus went on lockdown because of an attempted robbery at Anderson Hall on Nov. 11, 2013. University of Minnesota Police wrongfully identified a student as the suspect.

On Tuesday, school officials reported there have been 25 robberies in and around the University, an increase of 27 percent over the last few years.

The organizations wrote that while campus safety is crucial, the profiling can be devastating for black male students.

“[We] unanimously agree that campus safety should be of the UMPD’s utmost importance; however, efforts to reduce crime should never be at the expense of our Black men, or any specific group of people likely to be targeted. In addition to causing Black men to feel unsafe and distrusted, racial profiling is proven to inflict negative psychological effects on its victims.”

At Wednesday’s forum, Ian Taylor Jr., president of the Black Men’s Forum, said members of his organization feel threatened when the use of a racial description is given in the crime alerts.

“The repeated black, black, black suspect,” Taylor said. “And what that does it really discomforts the mental and physical comfort for students on campus because they feel like suspicions begin to increase.”

Welcome to what the absurdity of political correctness hath wrought, and how the “culture of victimhood” – as perpetuated by opportunistic liberals – plays out in real time. We must provide LESS information about a suspected criminal to students and the police because we don’t want to cause anyone “discomfort”! Sure, let’s put lives at risk so we don’t offend anyone. Can you believe this garbage? This level of PC “sensitivity” can and probably has gotten people hurt and/or killed. You give EVERY BIT OF DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION YOU CAN when a suspect is on the loose so he or she can be reported, caught, and hauled in for questioning. Eliminating crucial information about his or her physical description can prove to be a devastating hindrance to law enforcement – and compromise the safety of students, faculty, and others.

Fortunately, the university agrees and has pushed back – for now:

On Jan. 27, 2014, a formal letter was issued by Wheelock.

[…]

“I firmly believe that a well-informed community is an asset to public safety…I believe that sharing more information in our Crime Alerts, not less, is most beneficial in terms of public safety, especially when that information is available.

The information we share can include a complete description of suspects, unique identifying characteristics such as an accent or a distinctive piece of clothing, or the description of vehicles involved.

We have reviewed what other Big Ten Universities and local colleges and universities include, and our practice of including the race of a suspect when it is available from a victim’s description is consistent with their practices.”

If the university did put an end to its practice of considering race in crime alerts, it would be an ironic exception to campus policy. UM practices affirmative action, and considers an applicant’s race when deciding whether to admit.

The Daily Caller reached out to the Black Men’s Forum at UM to ask whether the group supports an end to racial considerations in admission as well as in crime alerts. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.